Miss Pinkerton

by Rinehart, Mary Roberts;

  “Now, what sort of woman was Miss Juliet Mitchell? She was honest, wasn't she? And all week she has been lying in her bed and worrying about the thing she had done. At last she decides to make a statement, telling about what she found in that room that night; that is all she had to tell, but she was determined to tell it. Yet after Mary produced that paper last night, I knew what I had already suspected: that Miss Juliet hadn’t told all she knew. She never mentioned that paper. Why?

  “But let’s forget Monday for a minute, and get on to yesterday. She was poisoned. I was pretty sure of that when I found that tablet on the ground, and our fellows confirm it. But I’m here to say, hard as it sounds, that if her murderer had left well enough alone, I believe that Charlie Elliott would have gone to the chair.

  “She was feeble. She had this heart trouble. And I doubt if she’d have lived until the trial came up.

  “Here the peculiar psychology of any intelligent killer comes to our aid. No killer is content to let well enough alone. That’s probably why they return to the scenes of their crimes. And this killer of ours was in a bad way; lying awake at night wondering if he had covered his tracks. Thinking of this, afraid of that. God knows whether there’s a hell or not, but the killer doesn’t need one. He lives it on earth.

  “And remember, Miss Juliet hadn’t mentioned that newspaper in her statement.

  “Let’s go back over that original scheme. I’m inclined to think that Herbert originated the idea. I know this much: he was to get five thousand down, and another five when he had drowned himself, or pretended to.

  “The scheme was, of course, to get away from here, and to make a new start. The Lenz girl was to go with him, and as far as I know, it may have been her idea.”

  “It’s the sort of thing she would think of,” I agreed.

  “Now that’s all very pretty. You can see Hugo falling for it. But I have an idea that the original amount was not to be so large; enough to pay Herbert what he was to get, pay Miss Juliet’s debts, and leave enough for the servants’ legacies. One of the things which looked odd was Hugo’s astonishment when he learned that a hundred thousand dollars was involved. I believe he was frightened, from that time on.

  “Much of the insurance plot I knew or suspected; but it was only yesterday that I learned that the Lenz girl had been Herbert’s lady love until he met Paula, early last spring. The plot had preceded that. That brought Florence Lenz in in some way, but I couldn’t see how. And there were other things to be worked out. I’d been over that upper room, but without conviction, as you know. So there was the explanation of those night invasions of the Mitchell house, and finding Charlie Elliott back there on Thursday.

  “Then there was the searching of Herbert’s clothes by Mary and Miss Juliet, and I suppose by Hugo before that. I knew it had been done, but why? Hugo I can understand. Paula had said that Herbert had threatened to leave a letter somewhere, so that, if anything happened to him, she could produce it. He was after that letter. But what were Mary and the old lady looking for?

  “That’s fairly easy. I think Miss Juliet believed that he had killed himself, and there’s a convention about such affairs. At least she believed that there was. All suicides left letters, she believed, and where was Herbert’s?

  “You get that, of course? All right. Now, she has gone as far as she can, and she is miserable. She has saved the Mitchell house and the Mitchell honor; but she is a sinning woman, and she will have to meet her God before long. She can’t stand it. She tells Hugo she is going to confess, she tells Arthur Glenn. And then she doesn’t confess after all!

  “It wouldn’t work, so far as I was concerned, and I began to go back over that poisoning. Why did she have to go? She had done her part. And then, sometime between four and five that afternoon, those two boys you’d held on the roof came in to give me something, and I began to see daylight.”

  He paused, and poured out another cup of coffee; it was cold by that time.

  “Now go over the people involved in this case. Hugo didn’t smoke at all. Herbert smoked cigarettes incessantly. There were only two men connected with it at all who smoked cigars. And what those boys had found was an almost entire cigar of a good brand. You have to remember that the press has known almost as much of this case as I have. The D. A. has seen to that.” He smiled wryly. “Also a good many of the newspapermen, especially the younger ones, never had believed that Charlie Elliott was guilty. And Elliott was a cigarette smoker.

  “But I had to be sure. I had to be sure that Evans hadn’t smoked a cigar there the night I got him out on the roof. Well, he had, but it was a stogie, and he still had it in his mouth when he got down the ladder.

  “This cigar was under some leaves in the gutter, and we’d overlooked it. But one of these reporters, a fellow named Davidson, crawled out there to see what I was doing below when I threw that ladder away, and he uncovered it. I took it to the laboratory, and while a lot of this Sherlock Holmes stuff about tobacco ashes and so on is only good for fiction, they did think it had been out in the weather three or four days. They didn’t know when or how I got it. That was the opinion, anyhow.

  “That gave me something. I could imagine that a part of the camouflage in that room which fooled Herbert Wynne on Monday night, and maybe let this unknown get hold of that revolver, was the lighting of that cigar. It hadn’t been smoked more than a couple of minutes.

  “Well, who smoked cigars on this case? Only two men, and you know who they are.”

  “Mr. Glenn and the doctor!”

  “Precisely. And the whole case came down to which of them profited by Miss Juliet’s death. By her will, in other words. Remember, the original modest insurance had been increased to a hundred thousand dollars. Even after Herbert had got his ten, and the servants perhaps five thousand apiece, there was still eighty thousand left. In other words, the old lady had probably made that will when she had a little capital, and Herbert would get what remained after the legacies. But she’d have to provide for the possibility that he might die before her. Well, she did just that.”

  “And that’s when you left the message for Mr. Glenn?”

  “It is. He said that the will was in the bank, and he’d get it in the morning.”

  He finished his coffee, and then looked at me.

  “Here’s where you come in,” he said. “You’d said that whoever saw to it that Miss Juliet got those doses of strychnia yesterday had to know that they would be fatal only in her condition. That looked like the doctor, didn’t it? But I happened to know that Arthur Glenn had recently defended a case where something similar had happened; not the same thing, but he had had to read up on toxicology.

  “When I set that trap last night, I knew that it was for one of those two men. I didn’t know which, but I knew that the Lenz girl was mixed up in it somehow. She knew Stewart; she used to keep books for him. And she knew Glenn. And you had revealed something yesterday afternoon, when you were scolding me! You’d told her that Paula had been trying to get upstairs to get a letter. You weren’t looking at her then, but I was. She simply blazed.

  “You see, everyone in that plot knew that Herbert had left such a letter, or threatened to. Paula and Charlie Elliott weren’t the only people who wanted it, and wanted it desperately.

  “But something else, too, had happened yesterday afternoon. Paula told Glenn and Stewart that she had married Herbert Wynne. I didn’t know that, or I’d have had her watched last night. But whichever one of them was guilty, Paula had to be done away with before she spread that news. Hugo also. When the Lenz girl and Herbert quarreled, it’s almost certain that she ceased being the go-between, and Hugo took it over. That is, Hugo gave Herbert the cash for those insurance premiums.

  “It’s pretty clear that Herbert didn't know who was providing it. He may have suspected, but I doubt if he knew until he had that visitor on Monday night; the man he knew, so that he was not alarmed, the man who smoked the cigar.

  “I didn’t know myself. I didn�
��t know which of those two men it was until I ran into that third-floor room last night, and found him where you had knocked him senseless with that door.”

  “And it was … ?”

  “It was Arthur Glenn,” he said soberly. “He’d been in the market, and he was desperate. Desperate all this week, too. Just how desperate you’ll know when I tell you that Miss Juliet Mitchell never dictated that statement you signed. The one she dictated never mentioned Charlie Elliott. What she told was that she had known of that newspaper dodge, and had taken the paper and given it to Mary to hide.

  “But Glenn had had a warning of what was coming, and so he prepared another statement, one of his own. He shifted them before you went in that day, and she never knew the difference. She had to go, of course, after that. He had taken a tiger by the tail, and he didn’t dare to let go. But I don’t know yet whether he substituted those tablets himself, or Florence did it.”

  “She did it,” I said with conviction.

  He got up and stretched himself.

  “Well, I think she did, at that,” he said. “One thing’s certain: Glenn went to that house late last Monday night to have a showdown with Herbert. More than that, he went there to kill him, if he had to. The chances are that Florence’s getting those keys out of Paula’s bag was just a bit of luck; but it may have been more. She wasn’t in love with Herbert any more, but she might still have been jealous. I haven’t a doubt myself that she knew Paula had the keys, and from that to getting them …

  “Anyhow, Glenn carried a revolver with him that night as well as Paula’s keys; and he had that newspaper in his pocket, all ready in case he needed to leave it behind him, bullet hole and all. If there was a verdict of accidental death, he would be sitting pretty. If it was murder, and he was by any chance involved, he could point to that paper and save his life. If it was suicide—well, it was just too bad, and he was out several thousand dollars and the balance when Miss Juliet’s angina killed her.

  “Well, he left the paper all right. But he didn’t need to use his own gun. There was Herbert’s, all ready on the bureau. He may still have worn his gloves, or he used a handkerchief. Anyhow, he left no prints on it.

  “He had no trouble getting in or getting out. He knew about that sawed-off bolt on the landing door; maybe from Florence. And he moves lightly, for a heavy man.

  “But figure up what happened! The old lady gets that alibi of his, and carts it away! And we guess a murder! Moreover, Mary has hidden the paper even from Hugo, and tells him she has burned it! Whatever is coming to him in the next world, Glenn has had his bit of hell already in this. And get this, too! Florence had got Glenn where she wanted him by that time. I doubt if there was anything she didn’t either know or guess. She had him chained, and I think he hated her. It’s my guess that, if he confesses, he’ll involve her, and involve her plenty!”

  I suppose I yawned then, for he got up.

  “Well, I owe you a lot, Miss Pinkerton. And not the least is a chance to get some sleep.”

  I yawned again. I could hardly keep my eyes open.

  “I want a week of it,” I said. “I want a week of sleep, without a break. And I’m ready to start right now.”

  He smiled at that, and picked up his hat. But he looked at the canary as he moved to the door.

  “Dick,” he said, “you know your mistress better than I do. But I regard that as a hint. What about you?”

  “Don’t be foolish,” I said sharply. “I meant that I don’t want a case for a week.”

  “I suppose she knows that there is one case she can have for life, Dick,” he said. “But she is a hardhearted young woman, and not looking her best just now at that, Dick. Not looking her best.”

  He turned around and grinned at me.

  “Well, I’ll run along. Have to see the D. A. and tell him he’s been fishing for a minnow and got a whale. And after that I shall buy and send—not deliver—a pair of surgical scissors. Well, that’s a policeman’s life!”

  He opened the door, and stopped with his hand on the knob.

  “You can let me know when you want to take a case again, little Miss Pinkerton.”

  “What sort of case?” I asked suspiciously.

  “A very long and hard case, involving a life sentence, chains and what have you,” he said.

  Then he closed the door, and I could hear him whistling softly to himself as he went down the stairs.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Hilda Adams Mysteries

  Chapter 1

  Hilda Adams was going through her usual routine after coming off a case. She had taken a long bath, using plenty of bath salts, shampooed her short, slightly graying hair, examined her feet and cut her toenails, and was now carefully rubbing hand lotion into her small but capable hands.

  Sitting there in her nightgown she looked rather like a thirty-eight-year-old cherub. Her skin was rosy, her eyes clear, almost childish. That appearance of hers was her stock in trade, as Inspector Fuller had said to the new commissioner that same day.

  “She looks as though she still thought the stork brought babies,” he said. “That’s something for a woman who has been a trained nurse for fifteen years. But she can see more with those blue eyes of hers than most of us could with a microscope. What’s more, people confide in her. She’s not the talking sort, so they think she’s safe. She sits and knits and tells them about her canary bird at home, and pretty soon they’re pouring out all they know. It’s a gift.”

  “Pretty useful, eh?”

  “Useful! I’ll say. What’s the first thing the first families think of when there’s trouble? A trained nurse. Somebody cracks, and there you are. Or there she is.”

  “I shouldn’t think the first families would have that kind of trouble.”

  The inspector looked at the new commissioner with a faintly patronizing smile.

  “You’d be surprised,” he said. “They have money, and money breeds trouble. Not only that. Sometimes they have bats.”

  He grinned. The new commissioner stared at him suspiciously.

  “Fact,” said the inspector. “Had an old woman in this afternoon who says she gets bats in her bedroom. Everything closed up, but bats just the same. Also a rat now and then, and a sparrow or two.”

  The commissioner raised his eyebrows.

  “No giant panda?” he inquired. “No elephants?”

  “Not so far. Hears queer noises, too.”

  “Sounds haunted,” said the commissioner. “Old women get funny sometimes. My wife’s mother used to think she saw her dead husband. She’d never liked him. Threw things at him.”

  The inspector smiled politely.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. She had her granddaughter with her. The girl said it was true. I gathered that the granddaughter made her come.”

  “What was the general idea?”

  “The girl wanted an officer in the grounds at night. It’s the Fairbanks place. Maybe you know it. She seemed to think somebody gets in the house at night and lets in the menagerie. The old lady said that was nonsense; that the trouble was in the house itself.”

  The commissioner looked astounded.

  “You’re not talking about Eliza Fairbanks?”

  “We’re not on first-name terms yet. It’s Mrs. Fairbanks, relict of one Henry Fairbanks, if that means anything to you.”

  “Good God,” said the commissioner feebly. “What about it? What did you tell her?”

  The inspector got up and shook down the legs of his trousers.

  “I suggested a good reliable companion; a woman to keep her comfortable as well as safe.” He smiled. “Preferably a trained nurse. The old lady said she’d talk to her doctor. I’m waiting to hear from him.”

  “And you’ll send the Adams woman?”

  “I’ll send Miss Adams, if she’s free,” said the inspector, with a slight emphasis on the “Miss.” “And if Hilda Adams says the house is haunted, or that the entire city zoo has moved into the Fairbanks place, I’ll believe her
.”

  He went out then, grinning, and the commissioner leaned back in the chair behind his big desk and grunted. He had enough to do without worrying about senile old women, even if the woman was Eliza Fairbanks. Or was the word “anile”? He wasn’t sure.

  The message did not reach the inspector until eight o’clock that night. Then it was not the doctor who called. It was the granddaughter.

  “Is that Inspector Fuller?” she said.

  “It is.”

  The girl seemed slightly breathless.

  “I’m calling for my grandmother. She said to tell you she has caught another bat.”

  “Has she?”

  “Has she what?”

  “Caught another bat.”

  “Yes. She has it in a towel. I slipped out to telephone. She doesn’t trust the servants or any of us. She wants you to send somebody. You spoke about a nurse today. I think she should have someone tonight. She’s pretty nervous.”

  The inspector considered that.

  “What about the doctor?”

  “I’ve told him. He’ll call you soon. Doctor Brooke. Courtney Brooke.”

  “Fine,” said the inspector, and hung up.

  Which was why, as Hilda Adams finished rubbing in the hand lotion that night, covered her canary, and was about to crawl into her tidy bed, her telephone rang.

  She looked at it with distaste. She liked an interval between her cases, to go over her uniforms and caps, to darn her stockings—although the way stockings went today they were usually beyond darning—and to see a movie or two. For a moment she was tempted to let it ring. Then she lifted the receiver.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Fuller speaking. That Miss Pinkerton?”

  “This is Hilda Adams,” she said coldly. “I wish you’d stop that nonsense.”

  “Gone to bed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s too bad. I’ve got a case for you.”

  “Not tonight you haven’t,” said Hilda flatly.